The Guy in the Yellow Jacket
by LateRiser
Summary: Ever wonder about those huge dudes in the yellow jackets? One of them speaks for himself, including his thoughts on the guys in the band.


**A/N: I racked my brains for months, looking for a lighthearted story that didn't involve character death. This not-really-a-story wasn't what I had in mind, but at least the guys are all alive in it. It was directly inspired by a rerun of "Big Time Photo Shoot", but like Kendall I've been curious for a long time about all the big dudes in yellow jackets doing security everywhere. **

* * *

A job's a job. You do what the boss tells you, you get paid. You don't, you're unemployed. Simple.

Some jobs, though, make people ask more questions than others. I've never asked the cashier at the market what her day's like. I bet you haven't either, unless you're trying to date her.

Plenty of folks ask me. Not because they want to date me; I wish. They want to know the people I get close to. They _think_ I get close to those people, anyway, and I don't tell them different. Why should I? In my line of work, you get lonesome. It's nice to talk to somebody.

See, I spend most of my time standing around, scaring people. That's what I'm supposed to do, anyway. I'm a security guard.

I didn't dream of being a security guard when I was a kid. I don't know anybody who does. My partner, Hank, was gonna be an astronaut. I was gonna play football. I knew I'd be big, like my dad, and I was a pretty good player as a kid. Trouble is, in high school you gotta have more than size going for you: to make the varsity squad you gotta be fast and you can't be clumsy. I wasn't clumsy, exactly, but other guys moved better, and a lot of other guys were faster.

I didn't make the cut. Scratch one dream.

I had no backup plan. Football was all I ever wanted to do. I didn't have the brains for college, and my folks didn't have the money anyway. When I graduated I was a very big guy with a rolled-up piece of paper saying I was done with school. What I needed was a piece of paper telling me what to do next.

I worked odd jobs. I was a janitor for a while, a gardener, a stock boy at the local supermarket. It sounds like I couldn't hold a job, but that's not true. None of my bosses fired me: they just couldn't afford to keep me around. I guess jobs aren't as simple as I said: I did what my bosses told me but I still kept being unemployed. That's how I figured out what "a recession" is.

One day I heard a concert promoter needed guys to watch the doors at the local arena. People told me I'd be good at something like that, but I thought those jobs were only at bars, where you gotta be over twenty-one even if you work there. When I found out the promoter was taking anybody eighteen or older, I high-tailed it down to his office and got hired on the spot.

I didn't know it then, but that was my lucky break. I fell into something I'm good at besides football. I can even say I'm better at it than a lot of other guys. I'm not just big, I know how to keep my head when things get crazy. And I keep my eyes open so I can spot trouble while it's still a ways off.

The tour managers for some of the acts coming through the arena started to notice me and how I did my job. They trusted me more than they trusted a lot of the yahoos they had to use in other towns. Finally one of the managers offered to hire me full time to work security for his acts while they toured. That's when I found out I was worth a lot more than I thought, and a heck of a lot more than I was getting paid. It was a no-brainer to sign on.

Now I work for the acts, not the arena. That's why, eight years after I walked into that promoter's office, I stand outside the dressing rooms for Big Time Rush wherever they're playing.

Like I said, people _think_ I get close to the acts. I don't. I mean, yeah, I'm _close_ to them all the time: I stand outside their dressing rooms while they change and I'm a few inches behind them when they hustle into and out of the venues. But that doesn't make me their friend. I'm hired help. I watch out for them, I don't chat with them.

I like the BTR guys, though. They're fun. I didn't expect that.

Sure, they give me headaches. For instance, I thought my job was to keep them safe from crazy fans. Turns out a lot of my job is to keep them safe from themselves.

There was that time in Utah when they sneaked off to rock-climb. I thought Gustavo would have a stroke at first. Then I thought he was gonna kill Hank and me for letting them get away. If Kelly hadn't found them by tracking Logan's cell phone, Hank and me might be buried in the desert right now, fertilizing a cactus.

(The guys meant to throw Kelly off by leaving their phones on the bus, but Logan chickened out.)

Most of the time things aren't that serious. Take the state fair in Arkansas. I didn't know them well yet and I especially didn't know Carlos. He smelled corn dogs frying and was off like a shot. By the time I turned around he was lost in the crowd. I looked high and low for almost an hour before I found him on the Tilt-A-Whirl. I wish I had found him a little later, or a lot sooner: as I hauled him away he tossed his cookies (two of them, plus seven corn dogs) all over my shoes.

He bought me a new pair of shoes. He was raised right, that kid.

At first, stuff like that drove me nuts. (The running off and upchucking, not replacing my shoes.) Over time, things got better. They got used to touring, and I got used to them, mostly.

James and Carlos are a handful on the bus. They play with their food and they start most of the water-gun and dart-gun fights. James' hair spray can be a problem: twice we've had to pull over because he used so much, nobody else could breathe until we aired the bus out.

Logan's usually quiet, but if the other three are rampaging he's right there with them. He can go rogue, too. The closest I have ever come to getting fired was when he vanished just after we got to the arena BTR was playing one night in Maryland. We pulled in just before noon. The other guys were practicing harmonies. Gustavo noticed he wasn't with them. They said they didn't know where he was (they were lying, of course) and Gustavo exploded, mostly at me.

Hank, I, and the arena's security staff spent four hours searching the arena, its parking lots, and the surrounding fields. Of course we never found him, because he was twenty miles away at a lecture he wanted to see. He knew Gustavo would say "no" if he asked, so he didn't. He just cooked up his scheme and got his friends to play dumb.

To this day, I don't know how he got off the bus when both Hank and I were between him and the door. I don't know how he got to and from the lecture. I don't know what the lecture was about or why it was so important to him. All I know, all anybody knows, is what he decided to tell us after he walked back in at four o'clock — which he reminded Gustavo was an hour before they were due for sound check.

They say Logan's the smart one. I believe them.

Kendall can be the most trouble. It's tough to handle them if he's leading them in revolt. On the flip side, he can make everything run smoothly if he gets all four of them running in the same direction. He can unify them to do anything. James is the big rock-climbing fan, for instance, but the Utah breakout happened because he convinced Kendall to go. Then Kendall convinced Carlos and Logan and came up with the plan to slip out.

Carlos, James, Logan, and Kendall. They're nuts. I like them. But I'm not close to them.

After all, I'm just a guy in a yellow jacket.


End file.
